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Tamara Gilfanova's Bathtime Stories is a splashy, silly read-aloud for 5 year olds about two brothers whose bathtub keeps turning into the sea.
Arthur is the big brother, and he knows a LOT about sea animals. Marat is still a baby. He only speaks his own baby language, although he understands English and Whalish perfectly well.
There are three short stories, and each one starts with the boys in the bath and ends with Mum mopping up.
In the first, the foam turns into the Arctic Ocean and a blue whale turns up. He missed his friends heading south because he took too long packing his suitcase (full of shells and pebbles as presents). The boys decide to help him get back to the ocean. That means a lot of splashing. Quite a lot. Enough that it starts raining on the floor downstairs!
In the second, the brothers are pirates, Arthur the Crazy Roar and Marat the Jolly Lad. A tussle over a magazine turns the water black, so obviously a squid did it. Then they notice their wrinkly fingers and decide they've turned into little grandpas.
The third is a walrus fight on a hot day, with toothbrushes for tusks and a stool for an ice floe. It ends in a toilet paper snowball war that even Mum can't help laughing at.
Who hasn't had a bathtime that got a bit out of hand? That's the joke all the way through. The boys always have a perfectly good reason for the mess, and Mum always arrives just too late.
Young listeners will love Marat's baby noises ("Looly-whully!") and the moment the whale sprays a fountain at the ceiling. Each story is short enough for one a night.
It's been translated into English, and now and then a sentence comes out a little oddly. You might find yourself smoothing a word or two as you read aloud. You may also want a quick chat about NOT copying the toilet paper snowballs.
If this one gets giggles, try Boo's Dinosaur next. It's another brother and sister story, where a little girl brings home a dinosaur nobody else can see, and her big brother slowly plays along.
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